While not directly related to my Coul Links project work, I had been working on project in support of a charity function that would result in a book that would be a very limited edition and which could be auctioned at the event as part of the fundraising activities. The work involved photographing Dornoch Cathedral and all of the holes of Royal Dornoch Golf Club as well. I then need to write the copy, edit and publish the commemorative book. So while not directly project related, it did provide valuable experience in photographing golf course landscapes and using the drone to capture perspectives of the course and cultural structures that would not otherwise be possible. It also provided another valuable opportunity to produce a publication.

I was able to use the process of a dummy book for the initial concept and editorial reviews which proved very useful to me and to the committee for which I was producing the book. The next stage of review was accomplished with a PDF version of the book created directly from Lightroom. The need for fresh eyes and plenty of them cannot be overemphasised. I used three separate individuals in series to review the PDF. I made corrections after the first review so the second reviewer had a “clean” version to review and yet the second and third reviewers each found additional and unique things that needed to be corrected. Did something slip through the cracks still? Perhaps, but I will be surprised because my editors were so competent and thorough. So great thanks go to Jerry Horak, John McMurray and Roger Boyce for their time and efforts.

It was a very short time frame to produce a quality publication and it was a challenge to get all the photos of both venues with weather and limited time for best light. I was able to make photos with a combination of drone and traditional DSLR work. Fortunately the golf course and Cathedral are frequent and favourite subjects so I did have work in my archives that could be used to augment what I took in that past few months. Some technical challenges with the drone resulted in at least one day’s work having to to be largely scrapped because the photos were not sufficiently sharp despite having had extraordinary light quality during the shoot of the photos taken that day had to be scrapped. This put additional pressure on as the deadline loomed.

I began the book design in the Adobe CC InDesign and completed the publication design in Blurb using their proprietary design software. I did learn a great deal more about publication design than I did with my first book and was able to produce a far more sophisticated layout. I was able to explore far more features in layout and design that I didn’t even know were there when I did 19 Sutherland Bridges. In the end the book totalled 60 pages. If I had another few weeks there might have been an opportunity to get additional photos that may have been even better than the ones I chose to use, but then that process too could be infinite. At some point one always has to say, it is time to publish.

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Ashley Rose

Ashley is a wildlife and nature photographer who focuses much of her work on birds. She is currently enrolled in the MA Photography Programme with Falmouth University in the UK. Her photographic work can be viewed more fully at Ashley Rose Photography – Chasing the Wild Life